Jeg bruker veldig lang tid på å skrive på iPhone, og jeg får nærmest leddgikt i gass-hånden av å skrive hundre ord. Så for å spare tid og ledd så skriver jeg kun på inglisj inntil videre slik jeg slipper å oversette.
Delayed update again. The Moroccan cell-phone networks that I have found so far surprisingly does not support data traffic (MMS etc.), so I have not been able to get anything out except (ridiculously) expensive calls or SMSs.
Anyway I've finally found an internet connection in the most surprising spot, here's what's happened so far:
Tuesday 21.04.10
Tuesday morning we drove to Algeciras for the ferry over to Tanger, Marocco. Beautiful weather and temperatures in the twenties. After our oil and tire change the night before we wanted to dispose of them at a nearby tire shop. I also needed some spare light-bulbs for Klara. It was really nice to get rid of the extra weight and hassle of having to strap the tires on and off the bikes every day.
After the quick stop at the tire shop we continued towards Algeciras. We bought our tickets at a shack near a gas station (that's where you get em apparently) and headed for the port. After waiting in several lines for many hours, first for ticket checks and then for passport and papers check, we finally got to the front of the line at the end of the docks. Once there though we were first told by one "official" that we should be in a different line, a second that we should have stayed in the first line, then a third that our ship would probably be docking nearby in 5 minutes but he did not know the name of it. We laughed it off and agreed that the further south you go in Europe the longer the wait and the less precise travel details become. A 15min delay in Northern Europe is a few hours delay in southern, and between Africa and Spain, these things might go as scheduled but very often they do not, or sometimes not at all.
We finally got onboard the "Milenium Tres" (looking like a giant speedboat) around two or three o'clock, hours after the scheduled departure. We strapped down our bikes and headed for the lounge/cafeteria for some breakfast since we had still not eaten that day. We had a beautiful view of the rock of Gibraltar on our way out of Algeciras. The lack of sleep from the preceding night hit us hard halfway but we didn't want to fall asleep as we crossed over to the African continent, so a few cups of coffee and red bulls were in order, and Jim pulled out the Yatzee to pass the time.
Docking at the port of Tanger we were excited and happy to ride off of the ship onto Moroccan soil side by side, only to get pulled over by a shady man with casual clothes and an orange "police" armband. He turned out, however, to be legitimate and he told us we were missing stamps in our passports. We had filled out the visa papers the nice lady at the cafeteria had pointed out for us on the way over, but stamps??
Well, it turned out that some other casually clothed police officials had been on board the ship for us to go see during the sail, but we - and one sleepy Spanish truck driver - had missed that piece of essential information. So we had to hesitantly leave our bikes on the dockside and get back onto the ship for our stamps, but we could not get them right away,"IMPOSSIBLÉ!", no, we had to wait until ALL the cars, trucks, people and sheep leaving for Spain had boarded.. Great start!
Me and Jim took turns running to the stern of the ship to take glances at our bikes and equipment, half expecting to get scammed somehow. We didn't, and after a good hour of waiting we had to run to get off of the ship in time before she sailed off for Spain again, and we didn't like the thought of a round trip without our bikes.
We found our bikes okay, and shady armband policeman gave us our passports back after taking his sweet time strolling around with them in his pocket shooting the breeze and high-fiving a lot of truck-driver "friends" rolling ashore loaded with teddy-bears and rainbows no doubt.
One hurdle passed and onto the next. More paper checkpoints ahead. We met a big line at the immigration point but a friendly armband official waved me through to the front, passing all the cars saying: "Super sport motorbike you go number one!". I smiled sheepishly and accepted the nice "gesture" thinking: "YES, we riders DO deserve to get ahead of the car people (..or cagers as we lovingly call them)" Sucker..
Of course a second armband official showed up in a flash and he also were only too eager to tell us what to do and how to fix things quickly. It didn't take them too long to start hinting about compensation for all the trouble..
Jim went for the old: "I don't quite understand what you are asking?" to; "Where DID I put my money..". I had to go upstairs to get my papers signed and in the end we both payed them a little as they were getting troublesome. Annoying, but better than getting delayed for several hours by these officials, giving us great first-impressions of their country.
Next up was getting insurance, we dodged tens of hutslers and scammers and got insured at the least shady looking booth and motored out off Tanger city and into the countryside, relieved and glad to finally be able to enjoy the view and the ride.
We drove straight south-west to Rabat where we stayed with a danish couple's house, a former colleague of Jim lives there.
Now, some have rightly pointed out that I've written little to nothing about our route in Africa. The main reason for this is that it has changed a lot since the original plan was made. Since we could not go all the way to Guinea, we intended to stop one country short, namely Senegal and the city of Dakar.
To get to Senegal you have to drive through Mauritania. Mauritania has had some bad things happen during the last years, mostly due to a terrorist branch called AQIM or al-quaida in Mahgreb. They are the same group responsible for the Paris-Dakar Rally getting canceled. Some tourists had been gunned down and others kidnapped during the last years.
Well, why would we consider it at all? Any type of these long travels through poor countries will always carry some inherent risks, that's part of it all. But we reckoned our chances were good, traveling light and fast, unannounced, and staying out of the "danger" areas.
This was until recently. Jim have former colleagues now working in Africa in positions where they have been able to give us sound advise on our routes and the country's status.
The advice we got not long ago was: "Do not cross the West-Sahara / Mauritanian border!".
There have been further kidnappings close to the border, this time aid-workers driving in a lose military escort column, the escort was there because of the risk, two people were kidnapped regardless.. We decided to take the advice seriously. This meant of course that we would not be able to get as far into Africa as intended.
However, Morocco and West-Sahara are huge and there are plenty of incredible places to go riding, so that's what we're gonna do. The total round trip journey is estimated to take us 5 weeks time.
Queue up for the crossover
Our ship
The Rock of Gibraltar
Passing time and staying awake
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